[Day 194] prose;; with lead inside my belly [open]

[metainstability]

Who: the Meta, anyone!
Open: Open
When: Day 194, early evening
Where: The Skyway, Open Plains area
What: Waking up lost in a new world doesn't count as being AWOL, does it?
Format: Opening post is prose, but I can switch around!
Warnings: Slight mentions of past mental trauma

 

Sleep, when possible, wasn’t something of rest and recuperation, but rather an inopportune succumbing to unavoidable bodily needs. Inefficient, a waste of valuable time, that was an indisputable fact, but even with the most advanced modifications, the harshest training, flesh was still weak, and weariness was unrelenting and inevitable.

 

When his eyes had shut, there had been sand, harsh winds, and unrelenting heat; not an environment conducive to rest, but it would have been pointless to hope for anything else.  Above anything, he was a soldier, and civilian comforts, such as proper sleeping quarters, were nothing more than a vague memory. 

 

Discomfort, however, did not explain the sudden drop in temperature, or the abundance of flora that had somehow sprang up over the short few hours that he had been out.  Nor did it account for the fact that there seemed to be a sheer drop just a few yards to his left, a fact that was currently causing more discomfort than he would have liked to admit.

 

What was going on?  The last that the Meta could remember, Washington had called for camp, citing a need to regroup and prepare for any difficulties that could present themselves when their ragtag group finally hunted down Epsil-

 

-lonepsilonepsilonepsILON-

 

The name was like lightning, arcing through his skull and burning through his attempts at recalling anything beyond the sudden, overwhelming need to get up, to run, to try to find something, anything, anything related to the one missing piece that had eluded him earlier. New landscape be damned, all the questions that should have been imperative be damned, the fact that the entire world seemed to have changed be damned, he needed to go.

 

In the midst of all of the internal chaos, he swept his gaze across his surroundings, the landscape escaping rational thought, but a glint of metal within the grass nearby caught his attention immediately. Armored fingers brushed over the dented shell of the containment unit he had been carrying, the action enough to quiet the racing thoughts for the time being. Epsilon, yes. Epsilon would be found, Epsilon would be captured.

 

First though-

 

First though, what was all of this?

 

With a grunt, he righted himself, eyes finally focusing on the details of his surroundings. Wind, grass, bright light, but not the harsh rays of the desert that he remembered mere hours ago. A trick, perhaps? Had Washington and the medic somehow abandoned him somewhere? The idea was laughable at best, but he hissed low in his throat anyways, attempting to access the radio unit in his helmet. He was met with nothing but the harsh whine of static, which was unusual. Damaged perhaps? Sabotage? There was no way to be certain without further inspection, but that would take time, and would leave him vulnerable while he removed his armor to tinker. Not an option.

 

Standing, he took stock of his situation; the weight of the brute shot was still heavy across his back, so they hadn’t disarmed him, which was peculiar in his own right, and the capture unit was still in his possession, another point away from any sort of intentional slight.  Any attempts at pinpointing his location with his tech came up woefully blank, something had to have shorted out the GPS circuitry, and it seemed that there were no residual heat trails that would alert him to any persons having passed by in recent history.

 

A short, guttural noise escaped his lips, an obvious curse despite the lack of any words, and he very nearly threw his helmet in frustration.  It wouldn’t have done any good, however, and though he was doing his best to ignore the fact that there seemed to be sheer drops around, pitching any of his equipment in a fit of anger would have probably resulted in losing said equipment forever if it happened to skip over the edge.  No sense in making the situation any worse than it already was.

 

With another derisive noise, he swiped the capture unit off the ground, hooking it to the back of his armor to keep it safe before taking a tentative step forward.  The soil seemed stable beneath his feet, but it did very little to quell his uneasiness.  Still, just sitting about in an unfamiliar, possibly hostile, environment was against everything that he had ever been trained, and the longer that he stood about, the longer it would be before he had an answer and the longer it would be before he could resume his mission.

 

Though there was still duress, he pressed on, one foot in front of the other, with no certainty as to where he was even headed.